Public health industry criticizes USDA move to bring back 1% flavored milk to school lunch program

01-May-2017 - Last updated on 04-May-2017 at 08:36 GMT

Since the Obama Administration eliminated low-fat flavored milk as a school meal option, milk consumption has declined, according to the USDA. Photo: USDA

US Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has started the process of bringing back low-fat (1%) flavored milk to the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs, which was eliminated from US school meal and a la carte programs in 2012.

However, some are critical of the move, saying it's simply a way to move more milk.

Since 2012 and under the Obama administration, most schools could only offer fat-free (including non-fat chocolate milk) and low-fat unflavored fluid milk in school meals to better align with USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans and recommendations made by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

According to the USDA, school nutrition requirements cost school districts and states an additional $1.22bn in 2015. While school meal program costs increased, most states reported a decrease in student participation in school lunches with about one million students choosing not to have a school-provided lunch each day.

“This announcement is the result of years of feedback from students, schools, and food service experts about the challenges they are facing in meeting the final regulations for school meals,” Perdue said in a statement.

“If kids aren't eating the food, and it’s ending up in the trash, they aren't getting any nutrition – thus undermining the intent of the program.”

USDA will publish an interim rule to cover the regulatory changes needed to allow low-fat flavored milk in schools. It is unclear when the change will be implemented.

Regressive move by the USDA, says AHA

Speaking out against the move, the American Heart Association CEO, Nancy Brown, said that the USDA loosening up nutritional requirements for school lunch programs to include 1% flavored milk could have serious health consequences.

“The USDA’s less rigid stance on school nutrition standards is a rollback masquerading as ‘flexibility’,” Brown said.

If current nutritional standards for school lunches are left in place, the AHA projects cases of childhood obesity will decrease by two million by 2025.

“We don’t understand why the USDA and some members of Congress want to fix something that clearly is not broken,” Brown said.

Other nutrition and public health experts view the latest change to the USDA school lunch and breakfast program as a way for the government to unload its oversupply of milk.

Dr. Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University believes that milk does not need to be a requirement for daily school meals and milk consumption should not be incentivized through added sugar and flavoring.

“I’m sorry for the problems faced by dairy farmers as a result of our hopeless agricultural policies but I do not believe that school meals are the way to solve them,” Nestle told DairyReporter.

“This looks like the result of dairy industry lobbying to me—it’s not about improving the health and nutritional status of school children; it’s about getting the government to buy more milk.”